On kids and user behaviour

In a recent article on useit.com Hoa Loranger (from NN/Group) published a summary of a study about: Teenage Usability: Designing Teen-Targeted Websites. Interesting reading and something of a myth buster (again - there was a previous study showing many of the same findings).

I have two kids at home (currently aged 10 and 12). It is with great fascination and also some trepidation that I watch their ways with computers. They have no fear (as opposed to my parents (the other day my father "destroyed the Internet" :-)). And they also have no clue! It is so fascinating to talk to them about this computer usage - the have absolutely no idea about the concept of the Internet (servers running software and linked with cables). It's just there for them to enjoy. And the best part of it - they don't care. I talked to them about this, and during the talk I realised that to them it is a part of life just as the telephone, TV and radio have been for me. I don't remember how old I was when I first started wondering about the workings of a phone.

But here's the thing: They are morons. Writing a document in a Word-processing they never format using styles (so they're not that different from the majority of users). They have no clue how to get an Internet connection. They don't know how to update their system (or the reason why this is a good idea). I do realise, though, that my kids are not as computer-savvy as some of their class mates (who on the other hand are distinctly unhealthy to look at).

So in conclusion: All of us trying to make computers easier to use, can rest assured that we will not loose our jobs anytime soon. Rather - we need more of us to help all those hapless children get on in the world,

One iPhone/iPad feature I actually love

I am not a huge Apple fan (as those you know me will testify). Primarily because I don't like the locked in approach which makes Apple decide everything for me, and the fact that it feels like you're signing up for an occult sect of some kind when you join the Apple bandwagon. And because everyone (or at least members of the sect) says that Apple is the most user friendly phone out there. It is this last part that really gets me. It's *not* the most user friendly phone out there. It was very user friendly when the first one launched, mostly because it was the first actual context aware device. But that's just not the case anymore; all the competitors are just as good now; some are even better! But Apple does have one feature that I love: The "reader" button in the browser - for an old man like me who normally use my phone (apart from the obvious phoning and texting) for reading online news of various kinds when I have 2 minutes of spare time away from my computer, it is just bliss to be able to get an online article in a font size that doesn't hurt my eyes. Well done!

Microsoft Surface ...

I would love to get my hands on a Microsoft Surface. It keeps getting mixed reviews, but my experiences with Windows Phone makes me believe that this must be the tablet I would like to have (as opposed to the tablet we DO have in the household: IPad 2). The Metro design just works for screen interaction and I would love to be able to bypass the ridiculous iTunes software which is at the best of times still surprises me with the features it lacks and strange hidden commands (although it does look nice - that's what you get when form conquers function). And I think I can easily do with an RT; I don't need to run older Windows programmes on my tablet!

Working with (real) developers ...

At the moment I'm finalizing a project at work where we're building a single-sign-on solution for all our services - which includes local user administration (our customers will have to maintain their own user access data). I'm the project manager - but just can't leave the user experience alone. And this has been *really* interesting. I thought (maybe somewhat naively)  that most developers had grasped the concept that user experience is more important than database modelling. Boy, was I wrong. It has been a struggle to get them to deviate from how the system is designed deep down (basically AD). I've tried telling them that a system with about 10-15.000 infrequent users *needs* to be completely self-explaining.

As we're using ADFS 2.0 you need to tell the system which organisation you're from (in truth you need to tell the system which AD it needs to ask permissions from) -  the initial solution (by far the easiest from a system point of view) was to have the user select either his/her organisation (if they were federated using ADFS 2.0) or a "generic" organisation (basically our AD for those who do not have a federated AD). After some debating we found a solution to present all our customers in an auto-complete input field. Kudos go to the developers for both developing the solution and also for acknowledging that it was a good way to go. Now we only need them to actually tell the users who their local user administrator is based on the organisation they have chosen. I'm told this is no small task, and although I believe this - I still find it strange. I *know* that the information is there. And if we can present the user with a choice of organisations from the same source it shouldn't be witch-craft to conjure up one small matching record from the database.

As we go live we will not have this feature. The out-come will be that users who are not registered will be directed to a customer support page, where they can leave a ticket or call our customer support people. They in turn will have to look into the system and inform the caller who their user administrator is. The customer will then have to contact his local user administrator and ask for access. Talk about a detour just because we can't show a name!

Samsung Flatpanel LED TV

We got ourselves a new TV. Because we had to re-paint the living room.

Anyway: The deal was that I had to get rid of the Media Center PC. I did a thorough analysis of the most used features and concluded that what I initially thought (back in the day): that it would be cool to have PC-access in the living room on the big screen, really wasn't cool at all. What with emergence of the iPad and notebook PCs and all. What we did use, though, was the guide, and especially the ability to record TV and occasionally watching a movie - this almost solely by streaming from various Internet services.

So I started hunting: and ended up with a 40" Samsung LED TV. The picture is crystal clear, it can record TV (although it only has one tuner so we can't really record something and watch something else), it can stream movies, which was exactly what we wanted. The sound does not match up to the external speakers we had on the Media Center PC, but no one expected it to.

It does a host of other things, too. Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter(?) - you name it. And the thing is this: it doesn't do it real good. I don't know why they bother - do people really want to spend 5 minutes waiting for the TV to connect to Facebook - I can walk to the kitchen, grab the iPad, check my mail, Facebook, make myself a cup of coffee and get back in front of the TV before it's ready. Sheesh. And then there's the dialogues - I don't know where they teach developers that you need to confirm that a file was deleted (after being presented with a very nice progress bar). I can only confirm that I noticed the file was deleted. Hmm.

Apart from these small glitches I do believe that we've got what we need - and the user experience is probably better than I expected (feared?).

Now I'm just waiting for the Microsoft Surface to come around; now that will be a treat and make Apple think.

I'm being forced into the Apple Sect ...

My company has switched to Apple phones (and me with them). I was actually very happy with my Windows 7.5 Phone. It was sleek, looked cool and was not exactly mainstream :-)

Now I'm the (happiness-wise undecided) owner of an iPhone 4S. And frankly I'm not impressed and have some difficulty grasping the almost religious approach to all things Apple. OK - from a User Experience point of view it works. Kinda. But, and there are a few of those, there really isn't anything special about it. Apart from the fact that they were first (which of course counts for something), and therefore has a head start into the app-market. This was where the Windows Phone fell through. If I was Microsoft, I'd spend 5 developers with only the job of cranking out cool apps for the Windows phone for the next year (they can just start with the most successfully ones on the iPhone and copy those!). Note to self: create next "killer-app" for Windows Mango and I don't have to work no more - this is an untapped market.

Microsoft's handling of contacts is way superior to Apples. Although the iPhone does a better job recognising phone numbers and generally is better at making the user interface context aware. And finally - Microsoft should either scratch the ridiculous Bing-thing for us Europeans (and everybody else not residing in the US). Especially the maps which are nice enough but doesn't have anything apart from telling me where I am to offer (searching for Pizza gave me the Italian city of Pisa?????).

The thing I miss most from my Windows phone, though, is the hold-finger on item to give me options (this equals a right click on a normal computer). Really useful and a gesture that's sorely needed in the iOS where I have to click an Edit button on the top of the screen. Also it baffles me why I have to scroll to the top of a list to be able to search it on the iPhone. Man, that sucks!

I like my iPhone - but I refuse to succumb to the pressure and become a preacher. They aren't better (anymore) - just different.

Smart phones (Windows 7 and Android 2.2)

Here are my thoughts on the user experience of Windows 7 Phone and HTC Android 2.2.

First off: Finally! Phones that makes sense and to some degree can predict what I want to do when I want to do it. The Android (with HTC overlay "Sense") is really good. Especially the mapping app that lets me use and interact (share) with Google maps on the go: In Berlin in November last year I had agreed to meet with some friends. We'd agreed on an area and that I should pick out a restaurant. I found a restaurant that looked fine, entered got a table, whipped out my phone and started Google Maps. The app found my location. I could tap it and the name and adress of the restaurant popped up. I could then choose "Share" and send the adress and name to my friends. They received a text from me with the information and could just choose "Map it" and then ask their phone to use the built in GPS navigation to direct them to the place. Really cool. There are glitches - sure - but they are minor. Only downside on the phone I had was the hardware which couldn't always match the apps I wanted.

Windows Phone 7 has a user interface that just blows me away. It looks so sweet and acts so smooth. Unfortunately it is still very US-centric which makes it less usefull here in Denmark. Mapping sucks big time. The maps look nice enough and the phone finds the location pretty quickly. BUT: there's nothing there. Searching brings out Bing entries of WIKI stuff and businesses in Seattle. Not really usefull when I'm in Copenhagen. This *may* be rectified in the Danish release later this year. But I'm not really all that hopeful as this is a Bing-map "feature" or lack of it, rather than a crappy phone app. Also: The dialing list (recent numbers) does not collapse callers - so I have a very, very long list of the same 3 people I call most and the rest waaaay down the list. I normally use this list as I tend to call the same 10 people most, and would rather not have to go through the adress book and search every time. On the same note the keyboard for the phone does not look up in the adress book (as the Andorid does - which is really cool). I'm annoyed by the many US-centric features and some of the not so thought-through solutions MS have come up with. But I still love the phone and mostly because the interaction is so sleek.

Media Center - no more :-(

In Denmark we have now officially dumped analog TV broadcasts. Even though this has been pretty thoroughly announced (so much so, that even my father in law who has no interest in these things what-so-ever, knew what was going to happen), it escaped Microsoft. Or rather they've chosen to ignore this and hope I will upgrade the by now old Windows XP MCE machine to Windows 7 so that I would be able to receive the new channels (oh! and the old ones too which seems to have disappeared). Well - no such luck for the guys in Seattle.

I've gone Team MediaPortal which is an open source project. It works (for the wife and the kids) pretty much the same way as MCE did. However, it did require a few long nights from my part fiddling with codecs and other strange stuff. But now we can get all the new Danish Channels (even HD), and we've got back subtitling as well (something we've had to go without in MCE). But user friendly setting up? Nah! Could have been a lot worse though, and I'm deeply thankful that a lot of people all over the world are spending time coding Team MediaPortal.